Tag Archives | polar vortex

Though parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic had a gradual introduction to fall, winter will arrive without delay. Cold air and high snow amounts will define the season.

Farther south, ice storms and snow events will threaten the Tennessee Valley and parts of the southern Plains. Much of the South can prepare for a wet winter, with some severe weather encroaching on Florida.

The northern Plains will be somewhat inconsistent with variable, back-and-forth temperatures and below-normal snowfall. Meanwhile, the drought will persist in the Northwest and northern California and ease slightly farther south.

After record-shattering temperatures and high snow totals last winter in the Northeast, a similar theme will continue into the 2014-2015 season.

Cold air will surge into the Northeast in late November, but the brunt of the season will hold off until January and February. The polar vortex, the culprit responsible for several days of below-zero temperatures last year, will slip down into the region from time to time, delivering blasts of arctic air.

Climate change is not hot weather, and it is not cold weather. Those conditions have been around for eons.

Climate change is extreme anomalous weather conditions, like 100-year floods every few years rather than once every 100 years, e.g., Eastern Europe in 2013, or torrential downpours equivalent to annual rainfall levels but within one week, like Colorado in 2013, or embedded droughts that last for months, like Russia in 2010 when grain exports were halted, or subzero temperatures throughout North America in January 2014 because of anomalous jet streams, i.e. climate change conditions.

All of these extreme weather conditions that in years past happened on the odd occasion are now happening with increasing frequency, ferocity, and longevity. These conditions are becoming the norm and turn nasty by embedding for long duration because of climate change conditions.

For many of us, the debate over the reality of climate change never goes beyond wondering if it can explain a recent bout of freakish weather.

Yet for many of the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos living in the UAE the debate has taken a tragically personal turn.

Yeb Sano, leader of the Philippines delegation to November’s UN climate conference in Warsaw, doubtless spoke for many when he implicated global warming for the Super Typhoon Haiyan, which has so far claimed more than 5,000 lives and left 500,000 homeless.

Mr Sano’s speech was made all the more poignant by the fact that exactly a year ago, his delegation appealed for action to combat global warming while his nation was being battered by another typhoon, causing a then-unprecedented disaster on the southern island of Mindanao.

He was close to tears as he called on those still sceptical about climate change to “get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of your armchair” to witness the evidence.